ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how an understanding of privatization in rural Kazakhstan is enriched by examining the process from the vantage of gender. It discusses some of the ways in which rural reform is changing the gender division of labour and, conversely, how local constructions of gender are shaping change. Rural development in particular has primarily been framed in terms of the need to restructure collective and state farms and encourage the formation of new agricultural enterprises based on private ownership of land and assets. In terms of gender, the model of ‘individual entrepreneurship’ obscures women’s contribution to the emerging private enterprises and marginalizes the other household survival strategies in which they play a crucial role. The political science approach to the public/private dichotomy fails to capture the specific ways in which the introduction of the market is intertwined with public and private spheres in ‘transitional’ societies such as Kazakhstan.
